After Nokia & Motorola, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, China’s largest maker of telecommunications gear, unveiled a new smartphone on Monday – ASCEND. Huawei is touting it as the slimmest smartphone on the market as it moves to boost its share on the global consumer market.
The company’s “Ascend” smartphone will help spearhead a drive into personal gadgets from mobiles to tablets. Huawei Device Chairman Richard Yu said the phone will cost roughly $400, but the final price has not been set so far.
Huawei unveiled the Ascend smartphones – available in black, white and pink – at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, USA. The 6.68 mm thin phone will be available in April 2012 in markets from North America, Europe to Asia, the company said. Its touchscreen is covered in Corning Inc’s Gorilla Glass and runs on Texas Instruments Inc’s 1.5 GHz multicore processor.
Huawei, whose switches, routers and hubs power and connect telecom networks, entered the consumer device market in 2004 and has been releasing new smartphones and tablets in a bid to become to become one of the top global handset makers in the next two years.
Currently, Huawei has negligible market share of just 2.4 % globally, ranking ninth in the world behind Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.
